Open top drums are commonly used in many industries for the storing and moving of manufactured parts metal cuttings to be salvaged and the like. Such drums are typically placed near the point which the contents will be used or being deposited. When desired, the drum is then moved to a second location or, in the case of finished goods to a truck for later transport.
While fork lift trucks are ideally designed for lifting drums which have been placed on a wooden pallet they are not well equipped to move open top drums which are resting directly on the floor. For this reason, many approaches such as tipping the drum and balancing it on a fork are employed with a substantial hazard created if the drum is not centrally positioned. Various clamps have been designed for attachment to open top drums but such clamps are not only expensive but are time consuming to use.
Frequently the forks of a fork lift truck are positioned so that they are exactly the width of a drum away from each other. The two forks are then straddled under the upper lid of the drum for lifting. This procedure although widely used has several substantial drawbacks. First, unless the forks are carefully aligned to straddle the drum one of the forks can easily penetrate the drum thus damaging it. Furthermore if the drum is somewhat out of round it can slip out from between the two forks. With the increased desire to reduce overhead, methods for speeding the movement of materials are continually sought.